Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  Four in the morning, Ness hadn't slept more than twenty minutes since turning in about midnight. The ringing in his ears kept him awake. He'd never seen anyone shot before. With the DPR, he carried a gun but it never come out of its holster. Usually, he hung it up with his coat to prevent the weighted leather chafing on his shirt as he paced from

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  desk to filing cabinet and back. In the Kennedy case, his big win, the arrests had been quiet, clean.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. ..

  His partner had the experience. The Peoples' Enemies he'd brought down weren't like Boston Joe; they went out in storms of lead rather than be hauled in for a show trial and a long walk to the chair. Dillinger had been coming out of a movie house, where he'd just watched State Prosecutor William Powell purge childhood friend Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama, and Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd was turned in by the collective farm he had tried to take over. Both chose to shoot it out and wound up riddled with I-Man bullets. It was expected, especially after George "Machine Gun" Kelly disgraced the outlaw breed by meekly surrendering and earning the new nickname, "Yellowjacket" Although Special Agent in Charge, Purvis never claimed personally to have fired the kill-shots, always taking care to give "credit" to other agents whose aim probably ended the criminal careers.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. ..

  Ness wondered what it was like to kill someone. Also, if Purvis had drunk quite so much before. Probably.

  He sat up in bed, sweating and shivering at the same time. His robe, hanging on the back of the door, looked for a moment like someone standing in the dark, staring at him with accusing eyes. The eyes of the Little Tramp in the cattle car, the family Nitti wiped out, the dirty children in Camp Nowhere.

  He remembered Bertha Thompson turning away after the killings, refusing to acknowledge him. People he had interviewed on a reasonably friendly basis were too scared to shun him now, but there was a coldness they couldn't keep out of their eyes. To them, he was no different from Frank Nitti.

  He pulled on his robe and stepped into the hallway. There was a thin light under Purvis's door. Ness knocked and entered. The bed was rumpled, but empty. A bottle, a dried amber rind left at its bottom, stood up against the pillow.

  "Bang," said someone.

  Heart hammering, Ness wheeled. Purvis sat in a rocking chair, hand pointed out like a gun. He was still dressed but had his jacket off. His holster was empty. He held his real gun loosely in his left hand. An unopened bottle stuck up from his lap. His red-rimmed eyes were as scary as the eyes that kept Ness from sleeping.

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  Back in the USSA

  "Do you know that more FBI men shoot themselves than are shot by enemies of the state?" Purvis asked.

  "Tomorrow, I'll cable Debs. They have to know Nitti is exceeding his authority."

  "A cable to Debs brought Nitti, Untouchable. Forget the law, forget authority. Frank Nitti is the law, in all its bloody, arbitrary, blind stupid glory. We don't live under socialism. This is the Rule of Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat."

  Ness stood by the window and looked out at the silent streets. Now the Family were in town, no one came out at night. He suspected Autry had put out word, warning people to stay away. The Enforcer was a dark wind blowing through. Nothing could be done. People had to wait until the dust-storm was over and they could come out of their holes.

  "Have you noticed what stupid assholes they are? They come back to the hotel at noon and get pie-eyed. Don't bother posting a guard..."

  Ness kept quiet. Out on the street, something—not a cat—was moving.

  "We could stop him. Crash a gas tanker through the front door and torch it."

  Outside town, the sun rose over the Sierras, casting a pale light across the city. By the statue of Upton Sinclair, something definitely moved. Ness turned. Purvis had his revolver aimed, barrel pressed under his chin, hammer cocked.

  "One wrong move," he said, "and the I-Man's brains are on the ceiling."

  Ness waved away the foolishness. There was something going on.

  "This place is surrounded," he told Purvis. "Some of them are inside."

  "Hot damn," Purvis said, waving his gun.

  They both looked at the door. It was the only way in. Ness's pistol was back in his room, hung over a chairback in a holster.

  In the hall, a tiny creak signified the presence of someone trying to keep quiet. Ness hoped several bottles of hooch weren't enough to blunt Purvis's legendary cool under fire. There was a crash as someone kicked in Ness's door. Thanking Providence and Charlie Marx, Ness pulled open Purvis's door; his partner sprang from his chair, levelling his revolver to cover the corridor. A nice selection of backs clustered around Ness's doorway.

  "Comrades," Purvis said, sounding sober. "Kindly put your guns on the floor and turn around."

  If they all spun and shot, only one would go down. But nobody wanted to be the one. Three men turned. Two wore army uniform, the other was Sheriff Autry. They dropped guns, and their hands rose.

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  "Fellers," said Autry, "what can I say..."

  "Make introductions," Purvis said, impatient.

  "This is Major Smedley Darlington Butler," Autry explained, indicating a serious-faced officer. " Commandante of the soldier boys out at Nowhere."

  Major Smed Butler and his aide were stiff-backed and ready to be tortured for days without saying a word, but Autry, more embarrassed than guilty, sang like a happy cowboy. Purvis asked questions, and drew out of the Sheriff an account of the group's intentions.

  Evidently the Bureau's reputation was more fearsome than they knew. Butler and Autry had decided that they couldn't move against Nitti without first gunning the I-Men. Ness was flattered and alarmed they had tried to cool him first, assuming Purvis insensible.

  "This is a nice little Counter-Revolution," Purvis commented. With a gun in his hand, he had a cockiness that was instantly impressive.

  Butler snorted contempt. Despite his federal uniform, he seemed the epitome of White Yank. He'd be happier at a Klan meet than a union rally.

  "C'mon, Mel," Autry said. "This ain't politics, this is killin'."

  "Major Butler," began Ness, genuinely puzzled. "Why put your life at risk on account of a camp of scofflaws and reactionaries?"

  The officer looked at Ness with something approaching pity.

  "Call the squatters what you will," he said. "I daresay most are worthless hoboes. But it sits ill to be an accomplice to the murder of women and children. By holding the perimeter of that camp, we most surely are accomplices. This is no honourable man's conception of the profession of arms."

  "Tell me, Major," sneered Purvis, "aren't there ideological officers in your outfit?"

  "You'd be correct," said Butler. "We harbour three of the species, their main pastime being to spy on one another. Unfortunately, all have reported sick."

  Purvis holstered his gun and looked thoughtful. Butler sat up at attention.

  "You're going to kill Nitti and the rest?" Purvis asked. Butler nodded very slightly.

  "We prefer to think of it as an execution."

  Without thought, this honourable man would have killed them both, Ness knew. Somewhere, murder had become the main mode of political

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  Back in the USSA

  discourse in the USSA. It had started before the Revolution, with Roosevelt, Wilson, Mix, Crowley. In the last years, other names had been added. Hill, cut down by a "Russian disciple". John Reed, dead of "influenza" in Alaska. There were even whispers about the "chronic myocarditis" that put Eugene Debs into the tomb next to Lincoln's in 1926 and got the capital's name changed. Capone spent more on tributes than food programs. Perhaps that was why he'd purged his Chicago florist, Dion O'Banion.

  "Autry," said Purvis "do you have a half-gallon of milk? I need to straighten out my head."

  "Purvis," Ness protested. He could see how this was heading.

  "Untouchable,
" he said, patting his gun. "Somewhere there's a line, and you have to step over it."

  Would Purvis ever have left his gun in his room, no matter how safe he thought he was? Maybe he never thought he was safe. Maybe that was the smart way to be. Because Purvis had his gun and Ness didn't, he was deciding the Bureau's policy on Smed Butler and the six-gun Sheriff.

  "So what are you going to do?" Purvis asked Butler, "go in there shooting?"

  "No sir," said Butler. "Bravery has its place of honour, but a good soldier will not endanger his men through recklessness. We intend to dynamite the hotel."

  Purvis whistled, and said "okay, I'm in."

  Autry whooped silently, and waved his fancy hat.

  "And you sir?" Butler turned to Ness.

  "The Untouchable is with us," Purvis said, before Ness could protest. "He's my partner."

  Butler had been working on this for days. The laundry room of the Lake Shore Hotel was stuffed with explosives. All the night-staff were warned to take an early morning walk between five and six. The plan had been to take out the I-Men, then proceed directly to the hotel, which was staked out by a hand-picked group of Butler's loyal officers, and toss a torch into the laundry room from a back window, then run like blazes. It was crude but serviceable, Ness supposed. Nitti hardly deserved more finesse. As Purvis had pointed out, he was so secure in the cloud of fear he spread about him that he hadn't bothered to have anyone on formal guard duty.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  Opposite the hotel, Deputy Gabby stood under a statue, accompanied by a leather-faced lieutenant named Randy Scott. There was a drunk bundled behind the pedestal. He flopped forward and Ness recognised Phil D'Andrea, one of Nitti's button men, his neck broken.

  "Varmint staggered out for a whiz," Gabby explained. "Don't take kindly to no city folks pissin' on a hero of the Revolution like Comrade Sinclair, nosirree-bob."

  "We oughta put a blindfold on that statue," Autry said. "The order came in to take it down when ole Upton 'vanished', but we just plumb never got round to it. Made a speech in Carson, he did. Lot of folks was pretty inspired. We marched on Snob Hill, turfed them plutes into the streets."

  Butler looked disgusted. Ness assumed he was not unacquainted with mansions on the right side of the tracks.

  "Are the staff clear?" the Major asked Gabby.

  The Deputy's face crinkled. "In a matter of speakin', yup, and, to a contrariwise way of lookin' at the sitchyation, nope."

  "Explain yourself, man."

  "It's like this: all them clerks and porters and waiters is well on their way to the bus depot, but them fedora fellers has them some feminine company in there. I guess they's all been practicin' their push-ups."

  Purvis swore.

  "Unfortunate," Butler declared, "but a few worthless drabs can hardly be allowed to stand in the way of our operation."

  "They's only one ole gal. They brung her back from Nowhere last evening. She went in kickin' and screamin'."

  "That settles it. She has doubtless suffered the proverbial 'fate worse than death' and would as like as not take her own life, if she has not already been murdered by her abductors."

  Butler was brushing this fly off his map with the sort of casual ease Ness might have expected of Frank Nitti. The Major ordered Scott to fetch a torch.

  Ness looked at the sky. The sun was up, but it was only five-thirty. The drink-sodden paladins would be sleeping a while yet.

  "Give me fifteen minutes," he said. "I'm going in."

  "Untouchable..."

  Ness shook his head.

  "Don't call me that, Mel."

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  Back in the USSA

  The lights were on in the lobby. In an armchair by a potted palm, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, the finger-cutter, sat semi-conscious in his shirtsleeves. His tie was cinched around his arm and on an occasional table next to him was a syringe and an empty vial. It figured some of these monkeys would be addicts.

  Ness took a deep breath and stood over the man. "Greasy Thumb," he murmured, "wake up."

  Guzik groaned in a brutal, though not unpleasant, dream. Ness slapped him. He jumped three inches off the seat and pulled back his fist. Ness, unsure where he fit in Guzik's idea of how the world worked, stood back, the better to kick his face if he had to.

  Guzik relaxed a little. "Whaddya want, I-Man?"

  "The girl. I want the girl. Where is she?"

  "What girl?" he said, shaking his head to clear it.

  "Don't mess me around, Greasy Thumb. The boys brought a girl over here this evening. Maybe you had a piece yourself?"

  "Oh her. The wild one. She's in one of the top rooms. You want a go, too? I thought you I-Men were clean-livers?"

  "I want to get her out of here, Greasy Thumb. Her folks are worried."

  Guzik shrugged. What a strange thing for anyone to want to do, he probably thought. "Big room, top front. I think the boys are finished with the gang-bang."

  "Okay Greasy Thumb. You can go back to sleep."

  Ness took the stairs as quietly as possible. The door he was looking for was ajar, the light on inside. There was no-one else on the landing so he stood, listening awhile.

  Above the sound of snoring from some of the other rooms, he thought he heard two people breathing. He grasped Purvis's knife in his pocket and eased the door open. His partner had given him the knife, telling him to keep things quiet. Ness had plenty of motivation. One untoward sound and Smed Butler would blow the hotel to the moon and Eliot Ness with it.

  The room, probably the biggest in the Hotel, was full of fussy, frilly feminine decoration - flowered wallpaper, fancy curtains, expensive-looking washstand and wardrobe. A naked woman was tied to the bed, and a man in his undershirt, fat buttocks wobbling, ground slowly down on top of her. The girl's face, eyes screwed shut, was turned to him.

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  The woman, he realised, was Bertha Thompson. The man was Frank Nitti. Bertha didn't register his presence.

  It would have been easy to pull out his gun and put a bullet in the back of Nitti's head. Ness might even enjoy it.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. ..

  Instead, he slammed the hilt of the knife into Nitti's skull, hoping to make a sharp dent. Half-unconscious anyway, the Enforcer was put out of it completely. Blood greased Ness's hand. He hauled Nitti, heavy and bulgy out of his sharp suit, off Bertha, and rolled him onto the floor. To make sure he was out, Ness kicked Nitti in the head. To make extra sure, he kicked him again.

  Shaking incipient fever from his brain, he turned to Bertha. Trying not to look at her body, blue bruises and red cuts on white skin, he sliced through the strips of sheet that bound her to the bedposts.

  "Can you understand me?" he asked, urgently. She nodded non-commitally. "Do you know where your clothes are?"

  She nodded again and sat up the way a woman of ninety would. She stood unsteadily and hobbled over to a small pile of clothing.

  "Hurry," said Ness. "We have to get out quickly."

  She looked at the clothes uncertainly.

  "I need a bath," she said. "I'm not going until I've had a bath."

  Her legs gave way. She fell and began to sob silently.

  A terrible coldness spread through Ness's heart. He pocketed the knife and drew his gun, a .45 automatic. He released the safety and cocked it. He took two pillows from the bed and lay one over Nitti's head. He felt the man's boozy breath as he sandwiched the gun with the pillows. He made sure barrel was pressed into one of the Enforcer's eyes.

  Bertha was starting to cry out loud now. Much more, and she would wake the house.

  "Here, Bertha," he whispered, "look..."

  He jerked the trigger. A bullet jammed into the floor through a pillow and Nitti's skull. There was a sound like a nail being slammed into floorboards. It wasn't quiet, but the hotel didn't explode.

  Ness threw away the pillows and scorched feathers spurted. He tilted Nitti's head, one eye-socket a bloody crater, towards Bertha.
>
  "Here, girl," he said. "Happy?"

  Shocked silent, she wriggled into her dress and settled it around her grazed legs. Ness's hands were wrung out and bruised from the stifled recoil. Cold fire still burned in his head.

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  Back in the USSA

  "Now," he said. "We leave."

  His arm around her, he walked her firmly out of the room and down the stairs. Jake Guzik was still in the lobby, conscious this time.

  "Have a fine time, Comrade?" said Jake. "You were mighty quick, and I heard a hell of a thump."

  Guzik grinned. He had dirty teeth.

  "This poor girl's had a terrible experience," said Ness sternly, playing the prissy I-Man. "You should be ashamed. I'll be making a full report to Debs."

  Guzik shrugged, knowing anyone with Nitti was invincible. Ness pulled the girl towards the revolving door. He told her she'd be all right, they'd get her a doctor.

  There was a noise upstairs. Bumping. Voices. Ness saw horror on Guzik's face, as if a ghost had appeared. From the doorway, he looked back at the lobby. The wind was taken out of him. On the stairs, his face half-red, naked from the waist down, a spasming animal keening escaping from his mouth, stood Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti. There were enough brains left in his smashed skull to keep him tottering. Ness pulled his .45 and got off another shot. Nitti's shoulder exploded, and he staggered back, belly and genitals bobbing. The shot sounded in the lobby like a drum-roll. Now, Butler would toss the torch.

  Beside Nitti appeared a rabid little man with a tommy-gun. Vince Coll, one of the New York Party fedoras. Guzik's mouth was open. He must think he was overdosing. The Enforcer stumbled and fell—dead at last?—as Coll opened fire. Bullets ploughed through the carpets, raising wood-splinters in a line towards Ness and Bertha. Guzik yelped and danced back, a bullet in his ankle, his shoe full of blood.

  Ness hit the revolving door, dragging Bertha with him. The door span on its spindle, then stopped. Bertha shrieked, her foot caught. She jiggled, trying to get free, and Ness turned in the confined space, looking through dusty glass at the lobby, which was filling with men.